The South’s Greatest Governor

Most prominent Civil War figures made a name for themselves through either a military or political career. A few, like Henry Watkins Allen, did both, first as a renowned colonel and later as governor of Louisiana. In fact, Allen’s term as governor undercuts the widespread assumption that Confederate administration was everywhere incompetent and inefficient. As the historian E. Merton Coulter wrote, “It was Henry W. Allen who showed the rest of the Confederate governors how good a Confederate state governor could be.”

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Henry Watkins AllenCredit Louisiana State Library

Born in 1820 in Virginia, Allen settled in Grand Gulf, Miss., and worked as a private tutor before going into law. But he also had a sideline military career: In 1842, he became captain of a militia company and served in Texas, defending it from Mexican incursions. After returning home, Allen was elected to the Mississippi Legislature; following the death of his young wife, he moved to Louisiana, where he became a sugar planter and continued his political climb, soon winning election to that state’s Legislature.

But Allen was as fearless in battle as he was ambitious in politics. As a colonel in the Fourth Louisiana Volunteers, he suffered a severe facial wound on the first day at Shiloh, when a bullet entered his open mouth and tore through his cheek. Stopping under fire, Allen stuffed cotton lint into the hole, wrapped a handkerchief around his jaw and head, and continued forward. The next day he commanded a rear guard protecting the Confederate retreat; a fellow officer later wrote:

There was Allen, his face tied up in a bloody handkerchief, with a bit of raw cotton sticking on his cheek — which certainly did not improve his beauty — one minute entreating, praying, weeping, tears streaming as he implored the men to stand; the next moment, swearing, raging at them, abusing them, berating them, giving them every angry epithet he could think of; then addressing them in the most affectionate words. … The last I saw of him he was off with them like a whirlwind into the thick of the battle. It made me both laugh and cry to watch him.

Allen was gravely wounded again at the Battle of Baton Rouge, a few months later. While commanding a brigade against a Union artillery battery and carrying one of the regiment’s flags, he got within 50 feet of the cannons when they opened fire with canister. The blast killed Allen’s horse and hit him head-on. When the men gathered around and saw that his right leg was shattered above the ankle and his left riddled with holes, they broke down and cried. Before passing out, Allen muttered, “Tell them to go on.” Refusing to allow the surgeons to amputate his right leg, Allen suffered a painful recovery, and it took four months before he was able to walk on crutches or a cane – which he continued to use for the rest of his life, while suffering from chronic, sometimes debilitating, pain.

It wasn’t long, though, before he returned to his other great pursuit, politics. Jefferson Davis appointed Allen a brigadier general in August 1863 and ordered him to Shreveport, La., to recruit and organize paroled prisoners. He had just reported for duty when voters elected him Louisiana’s Confederate governor on Nov. 2. When his inauguration was held in January 1864, Allen was still suffering from excruciating pain, but he dramatically hobbled to the podium and gave an inspirational address.

As governor, Allen faced an almost impossible task. Most of Louisiana was cut off and isolated from the Confederate states east of the Mississippi River, New Orleans and Baton Rouge were under enemy control, the state government had fled to Shreveport, and the people were hungry and disillusioned with draconian Confederate policies. But he proved a natural administrator. Allen toured the unoccupied parts of the state in an ambulance, giving uplifting speeches and delivering badly needed supplies. The governor sent thousands of bales of cotton to Mexico and traded them for food, shoes, newsprint (journalists were using wall paper) and other essential items. State-owned stores then sold the goods at reduced prices, and even provided supplies to poor families free of charge.

In one year, the state-owned store in Shreveport deposited $425,000 into the state treasury and provided $22,000 in free goods to destitute soldiers and citizens. Allen also kept public schools open, provided $11 monthly pensions to disabled veterans, and encouraged private citizens in Shreveport to sponsor plays and concerts to boost the soldiers’ morale.

Improving the state’s financial condition was one of Allen’s greatest accomplishments. He was such an efficient administrator that by war’s end there was a $4.5 million surplus in the state treasury, and Louisiana’s currency was more valuable than Confederate money.

The role of Confederate governors during the war is often overlooked. Like Allen, they paid remarkable attention to their citizens, but as committed states’ rights advocates, many also clashed with the government in Richmond. Not Allen. Perhaps because of his military past, he understood the relationship between the nation’s war-fighting capacity and his state’s own well-being. He did not distinguish between Louisiana soldiers and other states’ men when providing provisions and dispersing pensions. He also worked diligently to produce medical supplies for both Louisiana and the Confederacy at large by establishing turpentine distilleries, castor oil factories, hospitals and pharmaceutical facilities. State dispensaries were opened to sell medicine to the general public at cost and to provide it free to the poorest people, even if they were refugees from other states. Unlike other governors, who tried to outlaw alcohol production, he actually increased the number of distilleries in his state. Whiskey was vital to the military medical corps, and he made sure the hospitals scattered across the Trans-Mississippi Department were well supplied.

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And in contrast to other governors who, by 1864, had begun calling for peace negotiations with the Union, Allen never wavered in his commitment to fight to the bitter end. When the people began complaining about the Army’s increasingly intrusive activities, he issued an announcement on July 5, 1864, reminding them that maintaining an army in their midst was a necessary wartime evil. “These inconveniences form a part of the price you must pay for your country’s independence, and for the liberties you will hereafter enjoy.” But, Allen added, that did not mean civilians had to submit to abusive military behavior. “While I am Governor of the State of Louisiana the bayonet shall not rule her citizens.”

Allen backed up his declaration with action. One general later remembered an order that was read to his troops when they crossed the Louisiana state line. It declared that any soldier who stole from civilians or abused them in any way “should be missed from the rolls without a discharge.” The not so subtle warning that undisciplined soldiers would be summarily shot had its desired effect, and the soldiers caused no problems.

Allen’s determination to rein in the Army sometimes led him to clash with Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, the commander of the Trans-Mississippi Department who was headquartered at Shreveport. When Kirby Smith ordered one Louisianian exiled to Mexico without trial on suspicion of disloyalty, Allen demanded his release. Kirby Smith heard Allen out and then asked what would happen if he refused the governor’s demand. “What then?” Allen sputtered. “What then, General Kirby Smith? By God! We will fight you, sir!” General Kirby Smith released the man in question.

Another thing that set Allen apart from most other Confederate governors was his early endorsement of enlisting slaves into the Army. Despite being a slave owner himself, in September 1864, two months before Jefferson Davis recommended such action, Allen wrote a confidential letter to Secretary of War James A. Seddon that was captured and published by the enemy. Allen had written, “The time has come to put into the army every able-bodied negro man as a soldier.”

Allen was firmly committed to the war effort as long as he saw a chance of victory, but when the Confederate armies began surrendering in the spring of 1865, he realized the end had come. General Kirby Smith intended to keep fighting, but Allen knew continued resistance was futile and convinced other political and military officials that it was time to quit. Finally recognizing the inevitable, Kirby Smith appointed the governor to help arrange the terms of surrender.

Immediately after Kirby Smith’s surrender in June 1865, Allen, fearing arrest, fled to Mexico, where he published the English-language newspaper Mexican Times. He died in Mexico City on April 22, 1866 — one week shy of his 46th birthday.

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One-hundred-and-fifty years ago, Americans went to war with themselves. Disunion revisits and reconsiders America’s most perilous period — using contemporary accounts, diaries, images and historical assessments to follow the Civil War as it unfolded.